Now, when the voting is done - that's when the business of the counting begins. As we have been stressing, this is not an election - and the results will not be reported or decided based on the results at the constituency level.
So, unlike a general election where one side just needs any 16 constituencies to win, in this election, it's all about what the majority decide when all the votes are tallied.
The Chief Elections Officer explained that results will not be reported on a constituency basis.
Josephine Tamai, Chief Elections Officer
"Because it's a national issue and yes it's the first of its kind whereby it's a standalone referendum. I believe that it's just for the public to understand this is not a general election as such. It is not something by constituency. This is overall. It is for the entire country of Belize, so we are not able to say which constituency is winning for YES or which one for NO. That does not determine the results. It's a simple majority overall."
"It won't be that the returning officers will be declaring the results in the electoral division. We know that this is a national issue and it is something that is happening in the entire country of Belize. So the reason for that being when it comes to the compilation of the results it's an overall simple majority in regards to the entire voting population. It's not to say that in a certain division you have so many person YES, so many NO and you say the results in a division is basically YES or NO. It's basically the result for the entire country of Belize."
Jules Vasquez, reporter
"Would you make a projection as to when we will start or when we will be having a picture of which side is winning YES or NO?"
Josephine Tamai
"LIke I mention because we have counting happening simultaneously and no one box will have more than 5-6 hundred maximum ballot paper to be counted. In terms of the counting I do not see that the counting will take very long. It's just the returning officers putting together all the information from all the polling stations in their electoral divisions and provide that information to us. When it comes we have to verify the figures before, because even though its unofficial it's not that we could just place the information as it comes to us. We have to make sure that we verify those figures first and then we will do that. I am anticipating that maybe by midnight into early morning we should have the entire results."
Channel 7 will be reporting on the results from that election centre throughout the night on our "Run di Referendum" Coverage.
And while the votes will be totalled at a single location, polling stations will also serve as counting stations.
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